Every Monday for five weeks, beginning Monday, June 27, 2016, David Soul will release one part of a five-part reading of Michael Kerr’s Dispatches. These readings were recorded for BBC4 Book of the Week program; please respect their copyright. (A side note: David himself was called up to serve in Vietnam in 1968, but refused to go.)

“He seems to have brought to this book the ear of a musician and the eye of a painter . . . the premier war correspondence of Vietnam.” —Washington Post

“The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.” —John le Carre

“. . . Dispatches puts the rest of us in the shade.” —Hunter S. Thompson

Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his frontline reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there. Herr’s book was the first to hit the target head-on and remains a classic.

“American correspondent Herr’s documentary recalls the heavy combat he witnessed in Vietnam as well as the obscene speech, private fears, and nightmares of the soldiers. Herr captures the almost hallucinatory madness of the war. This is a compelling, truth-telling book with a visceral impact, its images stuck in the mind like shards from a pineapple bomb.“ —Publishers Weekly